The following is a transcript of the interview of Lyndon LaRouche, conducted Friday on Columbus, OH radio by Khari Enaharo. The topics discussed ranged from the war danger, to the absolute necessity of removing President Obama, to the real state of the US economy, to what is wrong with the American people that they are accepting this reality.

ENAHARO: We are joined by, I guess I would have to say, I've interviewed him several times, but we're joined by Mr. Lyn LaRouche. He was an American political activist, he's founded a network of a number of things: LaRouche PAC, and my God, he's been out there for many years. I've listened to his webcasts over and over again. A phenomenal economist. Just a phenomenal guy to have around on this planet. And so I am so happy to have him with us once again.

Mr. LaRouche, how are you doing, sir?

LAROUCHE: Well, I'm doing not badly, but the world is doing very badly.

ENAHARO: It is. You know, I just saw yesterday where fighters intercepted a Cessna approaching Air Force One. What do you make of this? It seems like we constantly hear this in reference to this President. Is there something going on that we need to know about? He can't land, or his wife can't land, and he's having all kinds of problems when certain decisions, or when folk want him to make certain decisions, or those decisions haven't been made. Is there a lot to take from this, or am I just over speculating here?

LAROUCHE: You know, well, I think the point is, get the thing right, you know. Obviously, there's a big problem here, and the key thing is to get it right.

The man essentially is a puppet of the British monarchy. They own him. They bought him. That's where all the money came from, and it came largely from drug money, and various kinds of things. But he's not the key...

ENAHARO: Let's walk through that, in addition to talking about the UN vote on Syria, in addition to talking about the emergence of China and Russia—and I'm going to get into all of that. But for many people who may not know the background of where his money came from, walk us through that, if you will.

LAROUCHE: Well, the point is, remember, you had Hillary Clinton against him in the primary process. And he won the primary—the question is, did he actually win it or not—that's not a settled question. But he got a lot of money from the British sources, offshore, and but usually, most Americans know that there's a lot of that that goes on in most elections, including presidential election campaigns.

So, the point is, there was a big swindle there. And the big swindle in the end helped him. He got the nomination, for the presidency, the election. And then he got the presidency.

Now, he's a man with many problems, intellectual problems, mental problems, and so forth. But it's a mistake to overemphasize him. He is not really the key to the problem. He is a very important figure in the problem. He's doing some very bad things. But the power lies not inside the United States. The power lies abroad; it lies in what we call the British Empire. They're the one that are pushing...

ENAHARO: Now for those people who don't know, who may not know, what the British Empire is—when they hear British Empire, they immediately start thinking about the British people. That's not what you're talking about. You're talking about something completely different—am I correct?

LAROUCHE: Right. That's right. The evil in society, for as far back as we actually know some details about what people said to each other, for example, has been, especially, particularly in the European sector and so forth, has always what we call oligarchy. And it takes the form often of what we call empire.

Now, the British organization, since 1763, where the British came in on a war which they had organized from behind the scenes, and took over a lot of territory, such as the conquest of India, the consolidation of Canada, things like that—since that time, that has been the British Empire, and that has been the most important factor in the planet as a whole in terms of political and related questions.

It started for us, most people know of the Roman Empire. Well, the Roman Empire died —all these empires died, but then they came back to life. The Roman Empire was the first; it went under, for an international empire. Then you had the Byzantine Empire; when the Roman Empire collapsed, the Byzantine empire sprung up in its place.

Then later you had this thing of the Crusaders, which had an imperial force themselves, based on Venetian banking.

And then you had a long period of wars, from 1492 to the middle or the latter part of the 17th century, and out of that process, and out of the crushing of the Massachusetts Bay colony, during that period, you had the emergence of a British empire, which came into power in 1763.

And since that time, that financial interest, that money interest, an international money interest, is the actual expression of a true empire. And what the British do is, they control a system, an international system of money. And we have been, in the United States, the greatest challenge to that empire, for a long time, especially since Lincoln led the victory over the Confederacy. At the same time, the British interests have been inside our country, as well as working from outside. And there's been an effort to just eliminate the United States, and absorb it into the British Empire. And that's where the real power lies.

Obama has no power except that which was given to him by the British interests.

ENAHARO: On your website, Mr. LaRouche, and I've gone there many times, at larouchepac, and I would recommend that those of you who want to get more information on what we're talking about, you can go to larouchepac.com. You mentioned you are averting thermonuclear war. Let's jump right into this. When you say averting, most people would think, "Aw, come on, there's no threat for that! That was back in th 1970s and 60s, and 50s—all that's gone by the wayside, so what are you talking about when you say, "averting thermonuclear war?" How close are we to having this kind of thing happen?

LAROUCHE: We could be even minutes away from it. And it will be thermonuclear warfare. What will happen—I'll tell you what will happen. It starts —remember, they killed Qaddafi. He was a prisoner of theirs. And they killed him. They wanted to get rid of him. They didn't want him hanging around, because they had other business, such as the focus against Iran and Syria. But Iran and Syria were only stepping stone—they're not the real issue.

The real issue lies in the intention of using the U.S. submarine forces, and related forces, which have the greatest thermonuclear power on this planet, and the business is to control the United States' thermonuclear weapons' system, which is crucially based on the submarine system. And what they would do, one bright day, anytime nearby, they would simply let loose, from those submarines and other sources, a blast against Russia and China and some other countries.

It would come by surprise, and it would eliminate, exterminate, a great part of the population of the planet all in one blow. We are in that area.

Now, we got there, how? Step number one, Libya. An illegal war by the United States in Libya. Unconstitutional, complete violation of the Constitution. So they went ahead, they finally killed off Qaddafi. Now, they intended then to go to Syria, and Iran—not as the ultimate targets, but as stepping stones to forcing a confrontation with Russia, China, and other countries, to which the United States and Britain would react, with a preventive thermonuclear attack on most of Asia. And that would eliminate most of the population of Asia, pretty quick, and we'd be involved with counterpunches, counterforce; it could a virtual extermination thing for mankind.

ENAHARO: Mr. LaRouche, that's insane. I mean, why would even, why would that even be on the map? What would be gained by killing off millions and millions of people in Asia?

LAROUCHE: Well... Look the trans-Atlantic world, as you know from living in Cleveland, and that area, you know that the United States economy has been in a process of destruction since the death of Kennedy, President Kennedy. We've been going down, down, down, and so has most of western Europe—it's down, down, down. And now we've reached the point that we are absolutely totally financially bankrupt.

These governments of the trans-Atlantic region are worthless. All they have is a tremendous amount of nominal debt, which is not fungible, it can never be paid; it simply has to be cancelled, most of it. And we've reached the point that now, Russia and China, especially China, is not going down as much as they are in the trans-Atlantic region. So, now the contention is, well, let's a war. Let's get rid of... let's bully China, Russia, and other countries... let's bully them into submitting to our dictatorship.

What does that mean? You either submit to us, or we blast you, with a thermonuclear attack. The British will be the people who are directing the thing. The United States military forces will be the major forces for the attack.

So far, it has been our own military leadership in the United States, which has delayed what had been intended to be this kind of attack already. So, it's not a U.S. problem, in a sense. Obama's fully behind it, because he's supporting the British, but our Joint Chiefs of Staff have blocked this so far—and other forces as well.

But we're still on the edge of it happening. It's insane, but Obama's fully committed to it, and he will do exactly what his British masters tell him to do.

That's it. He's only a puppet, and so don't assume that he's the cause of the problem. He's only a puppet. You want to find out where the cause lies, you've got to look at the British system, of which he's a puppet.

ENAHARO: Now, on a piece that you have on your website—as I said before, I read that website religiously—you have a piece that you wrote called The Threats We Must conquer. You said there are presently two great threats to the entirety of our planet; now, we kind of hit on one, with the great thermonuclear war, fusion attack. And the second one would be, you describe it as a "generally accelerating combined monetary and physical economic breakdown of the planet, an economic crisis centered in the Atlantic region." Let's get into what you mean by that statement.

LAROUCHE: Well, first of all, you know that most of continental Europe is bankrupt, and is on the verge of disintegrating. That's already there. We have a similar crash inside the United States, already. We have all these streams of dollars—it's all fictitious, it's worthless money, it's Wall Street money. And it's absolutely worthless. But it's now considered as the debt of the United States.

We're seeing, under this presidency especially, continuing what happened with George W. Bush Jr., we've got in a spiral, plunging spiral, especially since 2007, since the autumn of 2007. We have gone into a breakdown crisis inside the United States. And Europe, western Europe, is in similar conditions. Across the border in Mexico, a similar kind of thing. Great drug problem, but essentially an economic breakdown.

So, that's where the problem lies.

And our damned politicians in Washington, in the Congress, have the most gutless wonders you can imagine. I mean, they're not people who are inherently gutless wonders, but they're totally intimidated.

ENAHARO: Well, that's probably because—that's probably why they have the 10% approval rating. (laughs) That has something to do with it.

LAROUCHE: Exactly. How can you blame anybody for that lack of approval? What has this regime, starting with Bush, Jr., and this government, this administration, what have they done to the American people? What have they taken away from them? People are now going to die at an accelerating rate, out of economic conditions, like hunger and thing like that—and disease. Their health care's being taken away. Their food supply is being destroyed. Everything they thought that was guaranteed, in our system of government, is being taken away, step by step.

And really, the fact is, we have to throw this Presidency out. And the Republicans are not a help.

ENAHARO: I was getting ready to say, if you put Obama out of office, look at who's on the other side. You've got Rick Santorum, you've got Mitt Romney, you've the [ ] of Newt Gingrich. Is that a better choice?

LAROUCHE: No, it's not. The only choice is this: there are measures that could be taken, to dump Obama, and there are actually constitutional legal ways he could be dumped very quickly. Because he's a mentally disturbed person.

But what's happened is, we've got Obama on the one side, and this bunch of clowns on the other side. And the American people certainly have a sense of: what about us? There's nothing for us here.

So, you've got the demoralization as a result of that.

But, take this scenario, which is my scenario. Let's suppose that we dump Obama. Glory be! Because what that would do, would mean that the Democrats would then unite around a different candidacy, a different presidential candidacy, and that would wipe out these kinds of Republicans we're dealing with now, as the so-called prospective candidates.

So, removing Obama from office, under the grounds of Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, which would lift him from office—it wouldn't expel him from the presidency immediately. It would put his position in suspension while the matter was investigated. Now, that action, which would, could very quickly pull Obama down from control of the situation, that would be the end of him as a candidate. That would mean we could have another Democratic candidate, who would then be popular, and would virtually wipe out that bunch of clowns which are now listed as the prospective presidential candidacies from the Republican side.

That's the only practical solution in sight.

ENAHARO: Now, wait a minute! But, Mr. LaRouche, we just heard recently that the economy is on the rebound. They added 200-300,000 jobs last month, and they're looking to continue to do that each month. So, it appears to a lot of people that everything is going on the up.

LAROUCHE: No, it doesn't. It doesn't appear to people who actually out there. All the people who are suffering know there's no such thing. People who live in cities, people who live in towns, people who live in the rural countryside—they know it's a lie. There is no recovery, and there never will be a recovery of any kind, under this administration. Under either Obama, or those four leading prospects for Republican presidential candidates.

None of that apparatus will do a thing, or could do anything, in terms of their own, to save this economy.

We are on the verge of a crash beyond all belief, right now, and anyone who says there's a recovery—it's simply a lie. There's no truth to it. Go out to the streets in any part of the United States.

If you look at the employment ratio, look at the people who lost everything, all the guarantees—health care, everything is going. We can fix that. Our government can fix it. But we've got to have a presidency, and a leadership in government, which does go back to the commitment to the United States as people.

ENAHARO: Mr. LaRouche, how do we turn this economy around? I know you've been speaking on this for quite a while. Maybe you can give me four or five steps. If you were president today, what would be the first four or five things that you would do to save the U.S. economy.

LAROUCHE: Start with the first two: Number one, Glass-Steagall. Enacted immediately. It can be enacted immediately, if there's any guts left in the Congress to enact it. Without Glass-Steagall being installed immediately, the situation of the people of the United States is hopeless, period. Because you're going into a crash which will be homicidal. Mass deaths will begin to pile up very rapidly. That's how bad it is.

So therefore, Glass-Steagall will stop that. What it will do, it will take all that phony money, and simply cancel it. How? Because the banks, the speculative banks, the so-called proprietary banks, these banks will just be told the Federal government is not backing them up. They're on their own. We're going back to the system we had with Glass-Steagall before.

So, simply taking Glass-Steagall, we will just get rid of that debt.

Now that means that we will be able to do something in the direction of a recovery. But that won't be sufficient. Because we will not have, under the present kind of banking system, or the present Federal banking system, we would not have enough money to actually start a recovery. We could stop the bleeding, but we wouldn't be able to make a real recovery.

To get a real recovery, we have to go back to something that was done in the creation of our Constitution. We go to a credit system, rather than a money system. In other words, the Federal government will create credit, and that credit will be used for various purposes, for immediate needs, and also for investments which will rebuild our economy.

We have already, on the drafting board, from years ago, we have projects —you want to talk about, say 6 million people, 6 million new jobs. Even 10 million. It's very feasible in a very short time. Because we have the designs for major projects which we need, as a people, and these projects would reverse the whole program.

So, therefore, the first thing is, get a Glass-Steagall law passed through—just wipe out that crazy debt, that nonsense debt which we do not owe, under our Constitution.

ENAHARO: You're talking about such as the massive derivatives debt and all of those kinds of things.

LAROUCHE: All that crap. Everything that does not fit a commercial banking system standard. It's just eliminated. You guys own it. It's your gambling house. You own your own gambling house—but we don't have to pay your gambling debts. And just going back to that, which is what we've done a couple of times—as Roosevelt did, Franklin Roosevelt. And that will immediately stop the bleeding.

We have lost too much blood already.

So, therefore we've got to get a source of new blood, financial blood, to get a recovery. And we have some projects... I mean, right off the hand, I can give you 10 million jobs.

ENAHARO: You're talking about with the NAWAPA project.

LAROUCHE: That would implicitly do that, if we got the financing. However, if we go back to a credit system, which is what Lincoln did to win the war, the Civil War, with his greenback system, we would go back to a system like that greenback system, which is actually prescribed in our Constitution.

Under those conditions, any project, or any investment, which is going to satisfy a human need that otherwise cannot be met, or provide security for people, but also provide creative jobs—not just jobs, but creative jobs. There'll be a lot fewer banks up there, except the decent ones. There'll be a lot fewer speculators out there. We're going to have some real jobs, and the Federal government can pledge its credit, to back up projects, or actions of that type, which create a reversal of the present trend, toward a recovery. Just the way Franklin Roosevelt did, and the way Kennedy was trying to go until they killed him.

ENAHARO: How close are we? How much time do we have left? Are we 10 years out? Are we 5 years out, from a collapse? Are we months away, days away? How close are we according to your calculations, to this collapse?

LAROUCHE: I would say, in terms of urgency, today is not too early. And we're not going to make it through the election period, under the present trend.

ENAHARO: Now, whoa, whoa! What do you mean when you say, we're not going to make it? You're saying by November 2012, we're not going to make it. What does that mean?

LAROUCHE: That means that we have a debt out there, and it's not just the U.S. debt—it's also the trans-Atlantic debt. We have a debt out there which is a hyperinflationary pack of worthless money. And any little prick, trip, can blow the whole system, and send the whole system, shut it down. Just like Germany in 1923, with hyperinflation. We are on the brink of a hyperinflationary explosion, at almost any time.

ENAHARO: Hmmm.

LAROUCHE: And my main concern is to stop that. We can stop that, we can stop it with Glass-Steagall. If we go down now, and push through Glass-Steagall in this week, right now; if we get the Congress to have the guts to do it; that would stop the most dangerous of the economic problems which we face today.

ENAHARO: Mr. LaRouche, for those people who may not understand ... cause a lot of people really don't understand economics, especially at the macro-level. When you say a collapse, when you say something could trigger it, if you could, could you be a little bit more specific? Give me an example of how it would happen?

LAROUCHE: All right. People show in their banking accounts, and their other kinds of investments, they will show a money value to these items. If what is about to happen, happens, then suddenly all that trillions of dollars of money debt, which is the wealth of the nation, according to financial standards, can on one day, evaporate totally. That's what happened in Germany in the autumn of 1923.

In other words, you can find out there is no money. You're looking a money, a bank account—there's nothing there.

ENAHARO: Because there's no gold or anything to back it up. they're just printing out of thin air.

LAROUCHE: What has to back it up is production. There is no intrinsic value to gold, or any kind of currency of that type. There's no intrinsic value to it. The only value, is the productive value. That is, are people able to live? Are people able to improve their living conditions? Are they able to improve what we produce, for our needs, and for our advancement? With a crash like that of 1923 Germany, which was an isolated case, you imagine a crash like that happening in the trans-Atlantic region, which this world is ready for happening right now, at any moment.

ENAHARO: You know, I've read what you talked about, the fact that we were losing the machine tool and die industries. We were losing our ability in this country to produce products, and that ability being shifted all over parts of the world, and now you say, we don't —the money's not backed up because we are not producing as an economy. That's what I want to be clear about.

LAROUCHE: That's right. It's not just that the money's not backed up. What is the backup, and what for? Unless the use of money is used in net effect for increasing productivity, and productive employment, the money's not really worth anything. It's just a gambling house money.

In other words, the board game of Monopoly. You throw the dice, or spin the wheel, and you gamble. But, at the end of the day, once you've finished gambling at that game, how much real wealth is there on the table? Zero. And that's where we're at.

ENAHARO: I mean, Republican Mitt Romney has said, if elected, he will create 30 million jobs. He's saying that he will cut the relationship with China, the dependency on China, and he would do a number of things (LaRouche laughter)—well, I'm just telling you what he's saying.

LAROUCHE: I know, I know.

ENAHARO: To bring stuff back. Now, I don't know if he's going to win or not, but it's looking like he's the most likely one to emerge, even though Santorum is really making a push here. Is there any hope on the Republican side? I know you said that you said them as pretty much [ ], but is there anything, any of them are saying, that gives you any hope?

LAROUCHE: None. The only thing to do, is get Obama out, as I indicated, and you can get, nominate, a candidate for President, essentially under the flag of the Democratic Party, and that is the only practical action, right now, which we should consider. None of the Republicans, the Republicans are just as bad, in terms of their policy now, as the worst of Obama. Because they're outsiders, and they make promises which they do not intend to keep. Their mouths may say they're going to have a recovery. I know them. They are worthless people. We don't need any of those candidates.

We have some Republicans in the Senate and some in the House who are honest people, unlike these four. At least one of the four has some good points, but when it comes down to basics, he's just as bad as the rest of them.

ENAHARO: And that would be Ron Paul.

LAROUCHE: That's right. Because his policy on money makes him just as bad as the rest of them, when you come down to the bottom line. So, we have in the Democratic Party, we have some frightened former leaders—and they're still leaders in principle, and if they were grouped together around the kind of thing that we were looking for from Bill Clinton and so forth earlier, just that would make the kind of change in the situation; which would mean you'd get a landslide for any good presidential candidate on the Democratic side on that basis. It'd be a landslide.

A complete reversal, from where you've got a 10 percent popularity for the current President—you switch that around, you find it'd go exactly the other way. And the Republicans are obviously so bad, that it would mean a clean sweep; it would mean like a Franklin Roosevelt sweep would come through in the next election.

ENAHARO: Is it your feeling that the Republicans are going to lose this election, and you're going to see four more years of the current administration?

LAROUCHE: No, you're going to see death. In other words, if you go with these republicans, or if you continue, say, with Obama policy, I can guarantee the extinction of the United States.

ENAHARO: If that be the case, Mr. LaRouche, and you don't have any Democrats who are willing to stand up—at one time they thought Kucinich might consider it, but they messed up his district; now he's got to run against Kaptur of Toledo. So, he's in a bind, so he's not going to do it. There's no one—I mean, what you're calling for, what you're calling for simply isn't going to happen.

LAROUCHE: It is going to happen, it can happen. There are Democrats who are leaders, in particular, and among these leaders, who may look pretty cowardly today—but you've got to take into account what the Obama administration is doing; it makes them cowardly. But with just those kinds of leaders coming together, and one or two of them coming up as a candidate for President, a Democratic Party leadership in this election campaign would be sufficient to get us moving in a completely different direction.

At that point, the question would be, are they willing to go with the right program? And I think it's possible they would. And that's the best hope we have. And from that level of hope, reasonable hope, we then have to fight our way to make sure we get the right result.

ENAHARO: Well, Mr. LaRouche, I thank you for spending some time with us. I know you've got quite a busy schedule. Any closing thoughts?

LAROUCHE: Yeah. Let's pray for us. (Enaharo laughs) I mean it. I'm fighting, I'm doing what I'm doing. What I'm doing I know will work. I know it's good. But I know it's not certain to be adopted. So, at that point, you say—do your best, and pray.

ENAHARO: Do your best, and pray. Well, certainly you've been out there, you're prolific, super prolific, actually, in terms of what you're putting out there. And a lot of people, I believe, are responding, but the question becomes, when will the leaders have enough power, or enough guts, to respond, and when will they be able to step up to the table and do something? And we just, frankly speaking, Mr. LaRouche, we just aren't seeing it. I mean, we're not even close to seeing it.

I know what you're proposing, and you and I have talked before, but I just don't see anybody coming forward with it.

LAROUCHE: Well, what would you do if Adolf Hitler was coming to power? You would fight to get him out, wouldn't you?

ENAHARO: Absolutely.

LAROUCHE: Well, that's it. That's why I say, do the right thing, but pray. Because the right thing is there for us to try, for us to use, but do we have the guts to back it up. If we have the guts to back up, what we should be able to understand, is the vital interests of our people, and of this planet, then I think we can win.

I think history shows us that we can win. It's when we lack the nerve and commitment to do the things that are necessary in times of crisis, that nations have collapsed.

ENAHARO: One final question, Mr. LaRouche: What does 'win' mean? When you say 'win', what would 'win' look like?

LAROUCHE: When I can go on my death bed, and smile about what's about to happen. I think that's the best shot we got. And we have done something about that, to make that come true—that's the best shot you've got.

You know, I believe in a different kind of immorality than most people think they believe in, because I know that we are all going to die. No one has come up with a recipe that says, nobody dies. But the point is, mankind is capable of making gifts to coming generations, such that coming generations will do, and accomplish, what we could not do in our lifetime. But we will have made a commitment to make the success of those who follow us, possible.